Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers, performing the composition by Frank Horvat, will probably be launched on Navona Information on January 24. It’s a type of observe as much as her seminal recording of Ann Southam’s Rivers in full within the early Eighties.
It’s the qualities of water that impressed each items and their interpretations by the acclaimed Canadian pianist. It’s crucial for all times, however may also be damaging; it’s welcoming, however has a darker facet.
Petrowska Quilico commissioned the brand new work from Toronto composer Frank Horvat, a collection of seven items for solo piano.
Christina Petrowska Quilico: The Interview
Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC, has been acknowledged for her contributions to the Canadian classical music by many accolades and awards, and a profession that has included the whole lot from the Romantics to model new music.
She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 2021, and acquired the Ontario Arts Council’s Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Efficiency in 2023. She has a listing of greater than 60 recordings, with 4 JUNO nominations.
We talked to her about Rivers, then and now.
“The story of Rivers and the way I met Ann is kind of fascinating. One in all my college students introduced in her piece,” she remembers.
That was again in 1981. Southam had not put many indications in her work total. The music that had been handed alongside to Christina was marked to be carried out at a gradual tempo.
“I performed by it, and it took hours as a result of the tempos have been very gradual,” Quilico says. She was anticipating her second youngster on the time, and contacted Southam to speak concerning the modifications she wished to make to her work.
“The quick ones I sped up,” she instructed her. “She cherished it, and that was our joke for 30 years.”
The recording was made, and Quilico has carried out it stay a number of instances since then — however by no means fairly the identical means. “I play it in a different way each time.” It’s the character of the music, and likewise its inspiration. In 2009, Christina launched the album Pond Life, with compositions written for her by Southam. “I bear in mind once I did Pond Life, we talked to all of the our bodies of water. While you take a look at a drop of rain in a pond, it transforms that vitality,” she provides “The pond could also be easy on the floor, but it surely’s teeming with life.”
The collaborations with Southam have been fruitful. “She had this excellent potential to create house across the sound.”
Quilico remembers a professor at Juilliard, when Christina was getting ready Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto. The instructor talked to her about an “electrical present” that runs from the piece from begin to end.
“It’s the identical with Ann’s music.” She mentions her sharp articulations, and says she reminds herself of a quote by artist Wassily Kandinsky earlier than taking part in her music. “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings.”
Extra Rivers
That spirit of creation is what she was searching for in commissioning Extra Rivers from Frank Horvat. “It displays the Extra Rivers by Frank.” Horvat, as a composer, is commonly involved with the surroundings, utilizing his music to specific what many people are feeling about its fragility.
“I believe a number of us are actually distressed proper now with what’s occurring,” Quilico says.
Alongside together with her music, she usually writes poetry. Expression and artwork could be a solace. “Loads of this music, I discover this interesting proper now. It’s discovering the wonder in life a minimum of, as artists.”
To carry out, the method is essential. “In taking part in it, typically I believe we get very anxious,” she says. “You’re attempting to make a press release, you may let your personal anxiousness floor within the efficiency. I’ve labored onerous to create my very own method, to have the ability to play an hour’s value of quick and gradual music with no break.” It’s a bodily and psychological effort. “The quicker the music, the slower your respiratory needs to be. With gradual music, you must hear the interior element.”
Horvat’s music could be described as minimalist. “Once we’re taking part in the sounds, they create vibrations. We’re nearly like a tuning fork to sure sounds,” she says. “You employ your breath to create that stream and fluidity in your efficiency.”
Nervous rigidity can be utilized within the efficiency, however the physique wants to stay nonetheless. Good method is vital, particularly for minimalist works. “It must be performed from starting to finish.”
That means, the viewers can get pleasure from and admire the totally different moods and tempos, together with that “electrical present” throughline.
Her intuition that Horvat could be the correct composer to method for the sequel to Rivers was apt.
“This was his tribute to Ann,” Quilico says. “We had talked about how I labored on them.” She notes that Frank additionally doesn’t put a number of directions into his music. “Some composers, each bar is filled with directions,” she says. As with Southam’s unique Rivers, Quilico felt the tempos could possibly be adjusted in some areas. “He was all very supportive of that.”
The recording was executed inside a number of hours, she reviews, with the tempo adjusted for one piece on the fly. “He stated, I by no means considered it that means, and I actually desire it this manner. It was a very beautiful working relationship,” she provides. “Each time you play it’s barely totally different, so let’s go together with that.”
It was a fruitful collaboration. “We got here up with some fantastic music making.” The work had its stay premiere in St. John’s in July 2024. “Each time I play, I don’t have a precise tempo.” As she notes, totally different pianos may end up in a special efficiency. “That they had a model new Steinway, and third River I may actually velocity up,” she says. “Typically the recordings are a bit extra intimate.”
The Expressive Energy of Music
Horvat usually immerses himself in nature so as to have the ability to compose works that replicate its complexity, she factors out. Quilico says a Buddhist retreat that she participated in additionally affected her method to efficiency. “You place that into the music,” she says. “As a vibration of sounds on bodily matter, that’s actually what it’s.”
That’s why music, and classical music, could be such an efficient mode of expression complicated feelings. “You may really feel issues whenever you take heed to music that typically you don’t even wish to specific,” she says. “The entire world goes a bit loopy. I all the time inform my college students […] sound has no borders. All of us really feel the identical feelings.”
Composers, like all artists, are inherently a product of their time and its politics. She’d inform her college students, for instance, to learn the books that the composers have been studying on the time to higher perceive their music.
Educating is one thing that she’s lately retired from. “I’ve obtained so many tasks to file,” she says. “It’s good to get again to creating full-time.”
- Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers will probably be launched on January 24, 2025; discover it [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
